


House 59

by CloeLockless



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 20-somethings, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Art world AU, Artists' collective, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Community: rarepair_shorts, Creative lives AU, F/M, Friendship, Love, Occasional lovers, Paris (City), Polyamorous Character, Summer Wishlist 2019, Written by a French girl, friends who are also lovers, safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 19:23:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19091500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloeLockless/pseuds/CloeLockless
Summary: Dean isn’t happy with his best friend’s newlovehook-up interest. Luna’s there to remind him it’s none of his business and who cares.





	House 59

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiertorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiertorata/gifts).



> Dear Kiertorata, my brain did something funny as I was reading through your amazing prompts and rare-pair suggestions. It latched on a type of AU I usually don’t care for. But I love Dean and Luna, the true artists of the HP world, and I couldn’t help but throw some of your other requests together in a real-life art space in Paris… https://www.59rivoli.org/homepage/
> 
> Thanks for the inspiration!
> 
> Betaed by keyflight790 — thank you so much!

**House 59**

“I don’t get it,” Dean hissed, leaning on the wall next to the red doors, his cup of beer warming in his hand now that he’d almost finished drinking it.

He spoke too softly for Luna to hear, as Parvati and Lavender were on stage performing the former’s latest songs and he didn’t want to be that annoying guy at the back. Yet Luna shifted next to him, leaning her head against his arm and sharing her soothing bubble of personal space. There were about thirty people listening to the girls, some of which only stayed for a song before or after visiting the open art studios upstairs. More were chatting and smoking on the pavement outside the windows, wondering where to go for drinks. On the second bench facing the small stage, Seamus was flirting with Malfoy and Malfoy was flirting back, neither of them paying much attention to the music. Seamus had his arm around Malfoy’s shoulders, his fingers straying to his neck, and Malfoy was watching him back with a bright smile on his face, his own hand moving up and down Seamus’s thigh. Their knees were bumping into each other’s; they were just a shove away from humping each other in the middle of the crowd, already whispering shit into each other’s ear just to linger there and tease…

Disgusting.

Dean finished his beer in one and saw himself out. Luna followed. They’d both heard this gig a couple times already; they loved it, Lavender’s strangely raspy voice and Parvati’s warm tunes; but he’d had enough of the shameless new hook-up for the night.

“I don’t get it,” he said again, waiting for Luna to catch up on the multicolored stairs. “What’s he doing with _Malfoy_ of all people?”

Luna looked up and took his hand. “What’s Seamus doing with Draco?” she asked.

“He’s just a posh little git with no taste for art whatsoever who thinks it’ll make him look cool if he spends most of his free time here, buying art to make friends,” Dean went on, pulling Luna to him as Eloise Midgen climbed down past them.

He was going to say that haunting this art spot in particular all day, not being one of the residents, really showed how little the guy knew about contemporary art. It wasn’t the inspiring alternative space it claimed to be. No one important came to see their work, only hipsters and wannabe art enthusiasts like Malfoy who did buy his prints and took selfies with him, thinking they were promoting the next big star of the art world. But if he kept this line of thought, he’d end up saying he himself was a bad artist. He wasn’t. And he liked this residency.

Luna had not yet decided what she thought of Draco. Actually, she never had strong feelings about people like Dean might, or she never voiced them. You could sometimes see the ghost of a happy smile on her face, like when she watched their friends on stage, singing beautifully; a slight frown when she was concerned, like the one that was meant for Dean when he started to notice Seamus and Malfoy dancing around each other. Mostly she just gazed around, and you couldn’t be sure whether she was looking at anything, seeing anything in particular, until days later she would say something puzzlingly insightful in a completely unrelated conversation.

“Seamus likes guys like Draco,” she said, although Dean wasn’t sure what that meant—“guys like what?” he wanted to ask. He looked at her, waiting for her to go on. Sure, "Draco" wasn’t bad-looking, for such a pale, pointy twenty-three-year-old, but Dean just couldn’t look past his ridiculous sense of superiority. That guy was so full of himself.

“You are too hard on everything,” Luna said, looking him in the eye and stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. “Like when you throw away drawings we love just because you think there’s something really wrong with them. They are just having fun.”

Dean bristled at her words. Too much of a perfectionist, they always said to him. Terry was the only one who liked him for it, who would not make him feel like a crazy person when he went on a rant. Terry would calm him down with a chuckle like fresh water or a kiss like air. Luna’s girlfriend, Tracey, was the one who rescued his art from the dumpster.

Dean clenched Luna’s hand harder to anchor himself as they climbed their last flight of stairs, side-stepping visitors on their way down, nodding to fellow residents—most of them were downstairs, where the music was, or off the clock. It was almost eight. There wasn’t any decent light left to work and the usual crowd of curious art lovers started to trickle to the bars at 7. The late-comers never bought anything. They only came to take a look at that odd open building.

Luna’s gaze drifted from faces to wrists to plain-looking corners in the ceiling and who knew what threads she wove between them. She deserved recognition more than any of them here, but this space wasn’t for her. She’d painted here once, covering the curved wall of the stairwell with one of her gorgeous group portraits, but it had already been covered up by someone else’s work. You could see pieces of it sticking out near the steps or delineated into the later coats of painting, but it was enough for her. She just liked knowing they were there, there was a piece of them, layered into the wall to stay, safely hidden from view.

Dean let her drag him to the sagging couch at the back of his studio space where his friends and family piled up when they visited and he was busy. Luna sat in his lap and threw both arms around his neck, hugging him. He sighed and closed his eyes, leaning in her embrace. She unlocked one of her hands to grab her phone and turn the sound back on, replied to a text message. When she put it back down, Dean nuzzled her neck and pressed a kiss to her skin.

They couldn’t hear Parvati and Lavender’s music up here. Maybe if they opened the window. There was a distant bass thumping through the walls, hallways, sculptures, muffled. Luna’s phone vibrated once more, making the empty ink pots rattle along on the metallic table top. Luna stretched out her arm again.

“s’that Tracey?” Dean asked lazily.

Luna hummed something like confirmation, her soft, serene smile floating on her lips.

Dean would never be able to draw a smile like hers.

It was fine. Sometimes life was so much more beautiful than art. Dean wanted to enjoy it. He wanted to believe art could be a job to him. A job he loved, that made him thrive, but one that he wouldn’t lose himself in, missing out on the magic that people had to offer. People like Luna, and Terry, his family, and Seamus, who was wonderfully, ridiculously imperfect.

Luna’s perfume had washed away with the day. There were only hints of spices and sweetness in her skin and in her clothes, mingling with the light briny smell of her sweat.

Luna twisted her arm around, phone still in hand, to pull her hair away from the spot he was nuzzling on her neck, giving him better access. Moments later, she put the phone away for good and focused on him. Grabbing his chin playfully, she demanded a kiss. Her lips against his were soft, so much sweeter than whatever rubbish he’d been feeling downstairs.

They kissed, and kissed, and then Luna giggled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She studied his face as if she were looking for clues in the ways light and shadow fell on it; smoothing out his forehead, she looked satisfied with the lack of tension in his lines. 

“You’re in love with Terry.”

Was she making a guess or stating a fact? Dean wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure where that thought came from.

“What makes you say that?”

She frowned as if the shift in his eyebrows had ruined her delicate piece of art. But then her smile was back.

“You miss him,” she said, and again, it might be a question, or not.

As he looked at her in confusion, unsure what to say, she leaned back for a lingering kiss, one he was happy to melt into, until she said, “See?”

“Can’t say I do, Luna.”

She shook her head. Her bracelets and bangles chimed past his ear as she laced her fingers behind his neck. Studying his confused face again, she eventually snatched an invisible butterfly near his eye and tossed it aside, taking care not to crush its wings. Then she found another.

Lee’s voice called on the speakers for the visitors to make their way back downstairs. There was no one else on their floor. Luna got up and vanished out the right hand opening into the hallway, popping back into view at the other end of the room, thirty seconds later, having skittered around the studio spaces, making sure they were alone. She flitted past Dean’s table again, vanishing once more, except this time he heard her close the door to the stairway and move something heavy across the floor. Then she was back, climbing onto his lap and kissing him deeply.

“Risk it?” he asked.

Luna pressed herself against his trapped erection, and that was all the answer he was going to get. He stifled a moan, giddy and delighted, keeping an ear out for people coming in. Then she rose on her knees and leaned over him to grab a condom in her bag, which was in the mess of books behind the chair. Dean took the opportunity to kiss below her breasts, slide his hands up her skirt into her underwear.

He slid awkwardly down the seat, between her legs, keeping her up, so that he could use his mouth where his hands had been busy. It was a bit of a strain, but he didn’t plan on needing long to bring her there.

He barely had time to catch his breath after coming in her arms, chuckling and kissing whatever inch of Luna was closest, wishing he could bask in the afterglow, before someone tried to push the door with long loud drag.

“What the… Someone in there?” Lee called from the hallway, hidden from view.

Luna called back—“Yes! Sorry!”—, slid up and off Dean and pushed her skirt back down, forgoing her underwear, trotting away to the hallway, disappearing from view to show Lee who was there. Dean looked around for a second before figuring out where to slink off to get rid of the condom and get dressed.

“I wanted to block the door at 8, without locking it,” Luna said on the other side of the wall. “Dean and I are packing up. I checked the floor, there’s no one else.”

“Right,” Lee said. “Not sure that’s what _this_ is for. But I guess it worked.”

Dean hesitated, holding the condom above the dustbin. They weren’t the first to fuck in the workspace, even though it wasn’t allowed, but he didn’t like to be one of those guys who left their DNA behind. Dumping the condom, he turned on the tap and washed his dick, pulled his pants back on; then he decided against clearing the rest of the space, tied the waste bag up and washed his hands.

They climbed down the spiral staircase. Dean took out the trash while Luna popped to the bathroom, and they met up outside where a small flock of people were having a smoke. In the shop window, Parvati and Lavender offered one last song to the clapping audience. Seamus and his new interest were nowhere to be seen.

Dean checked his phone anyway. Terry had sent him a picture of an amazing-looking pint of German beer.

“Do you want to head back or hang out by the river?” Luna asked.

Dean sent an emoji back to Terry. He texted the girls that they would head out, then he put his phone away, took Luna’s hand, and lead her away into the Parisian night.


End file.
